John Walsh brings state Democrats back to their organizing roots

Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh knows what the grassroots are all about.

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southcoasttoday.com

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Posted Nov. 18, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 29, 2012 at 7:39 PM

Posted Nov. 18, 2012 at 12:01 AM
Updated Nov 29, 2012 at 7:39 PM

» Social News

Massachusetts Democratic Party Chairman John Walsh knows what the grassroots are all about.

The affable small-town insurance broker from just up the road in Abington has quietly rebuilt the state Democrat's organization since its shocking defeat in a 2010 special election to Scott Brown.

And he did it by emphasizing grassroots organizing: poring over the voting records; spending countless weekends canvassing voters door-to-door; and then on Election Day getting stragglers to the polls.

In 2010, besides the Brown victory, Massachusetts Republicans had won the largest amount of House seats they had held in a generation; the bluest of blue states was looking like it might turn a bit purple.

But since that time, Walsh has served as the chairman of Gov. Deval Patrick's successful re-election campaign and then won his biggest victory a week ago Tuesday.

Not only did Walsh's grassroots volunteers play a key role in ousting, after just two years, the popular Brown from office; it also helped beat back the Republicans' aggressive challenge against embattled 6th District Congressman John Tierney.

Tierney was carrying the baggage of an extended family that is involved in illegal gambling, but Walsh says the 6th District voters knew all about what Tierney had done for them constituent service-wise. (Think Barney Frank.) Oh, and Walsh and his crews canvassed in the embattled 6th at least a dozen times.

For icing on the cake, the Democrats, under Walsh's leadership, reduced the GOP's already small holdings in the 160-member State House from 33 to 29.

Walsh acknowledges that successful campaigns must start with good candidates and he emphasizes that Democrats do better when they "stand up for what they believe in."

Still, he says organization is what wins close races.

On election morning, he points out that some polls had Elizabeth Warren and Scott Brown dead even. By election evening Warren, whose campaign had knocked on a million doors, had won by a healthy 8 percent.

Walsh, who even found time to organize his own conservative-leaning legislative district, said that on Election Day when he arrived at the Abington High School polls at 6:30 a.m., there was not a single Republican operative putting together a campaign sign operation. That's in a town in which Brown two years ago had won 68 percent of the vote.

"Scott Brown had nothing on the ground," he said.

Brown, he argues, spent his campaign catering to the conservative entertainment complex — building his re-election effort solely around personal media attacks against Warren and her family.

By 1 p.m. on Election Day, Walsh said the Democrats in his own little district had already gotten 89 of 127 of their targeted voters to the polls. At 4 p.m., their grassroots workers were knocking for the third time on the doors of supporters who still hadn't voted.

Walsh is big on door-to-door campaigning because he says it represents the exact opposite of everything voters hate about politics: principally the lies and the negative ads. "When people see stuff on TV, they remember the nice lady who was at their door," he said.

To give you an idea of the kind of grassroots organization Walsh is talking about, he rounded up 20,000 volunteers just in Massachusetts. By comparison, he says the Romney campaign had only 34,000 volunteers nationally.

Walsh goes so far as to advise the Republicans to get off the media-centric campaigns and build their own old-fashioned organizations.

He thinks by going door-to-door it would actually moderate what he describes as extremist elements in the GOP.

"If Republicans went out and talked to their neighbors, they'd lose a lot of their stupid ideas," he says.

It's a highly-partisan comment but Walsh doesn't come across as anything but good-natured and genuine when he says it.

From his own door-to-door campaign he says he's firmly convinced the majority of voters are closer to the Democrats.

Maybe he's right and maybe's he's wrong. One thing is for sure, however. The Massachusetts Republican Party for a half-century has failed to do grassroots organizing. It has focused almost all its efforts on big media for high-profile gubernatorial, Senate and congressional campaigns.

It just might want to consider taking a page from John Walsh's organizing manual. If only to find out what the non-Tea Party voters out there are thinking about.

Jack Spillane is the executive news editor of The Standard-Times and southcoasttoday.com. Contact Jack Spillane at jspillane@s-t.com or 508-979-4472.